Re: Horatio & Yelina #6 - A Sense of Belonging - So Say We A
I'm not sure who said this, but someone mentioned that H is a TV character and it makes sense for his life to be full of drama (I'm paraphrasing). To that I would respond that there is drama and then there's drama! Some of his backstory has been well conceived, but they have made some of it (namely the NY background) far too angsty to be believable.
I was the one who said that.
I don't see the NY background as being too angsty at all. Look, anytime you have a TV cop (or someone in law enforcement) whose mother/father has been murdered, you have an overused archetype.
Someone else said that they would have preferred that part of the story to remain as it had since season one: that Horatio and Ray's mother was murdered by a random drug dealer. To me, that makes the story even MORE cliché. Most of the time, when TV deals with a parental death (which of course spurs the child to become a cop/CSI/ME/etc), the murderer is some random killer who's never caught. The same random killer reappears usually in season 3 or 4 during sweeps no less, taunting and tormenting the protagonist.
Like I said, it's old hat.
And not only that, but it doesn't even remotely accurately reflect the reality in this country. Look at any study: MOST women are murdered by someone they know. Several studies suggest that number is as high as 90%. Horatio's not saying his mother was abducted by aliens (yet - there's always season 6); what he experienced isn't unlikely at all when it comes to homicides. Sure, it's angsty and sad, but I can accept it because these things happen.
I'd also say that the implied child abuse is, again, something sad, but not all unlikely given the circumstances. Too many children are abused physically. Generally speaking, boys are more likely to be on the receiving end because they're "supposed to be a man" and are generally handled more roughly. But more than any of that, if H's father killed his mother, then... like, what are the chances his father
wasn't going to hit him?
The only other NY bit we got was the Resden thing. And, again, I don't see the whole stabbing incident being all that unbelievable. At some point, a cop will get hurt, especially when he/she is thinking emotionally.
I'm not saying that the issues brought up in season 4 are perfect. The
execution was lacking, and I think for all that information, it should have either been spread out over multiple seasons OR have been the main arc for Horatio that year. For me, it had the potential to be angsty, but it WASN'T even remotely. And how can it be when it's little more than a blip onscreen?
Any of those issues can take a lifetime for a person to get over and to deal with. To me, it's not the ideas themselves, but rather the way they are carelessly included, never to be fully fleshed out. That drives me nuts. Well, that and anything connected to Marisol.
That's a lovely screencap of SM, Lucy. I know the dialogue gets a LOT of flack around here (usually - okay, almost always deserved), but I loved the point in "Burned" where the stalker/perv mentions how Y looks at H. SM and DC have such great chemistry, and there always seems to be something in their gazes. No, I'm not suggesting anything real life going on. Just that the actors are fantastic at acting with body language and eye contact. Again, unlike the scenes with Alana de la Garza, there's a lot more going on than just reading the lines.
